Stefan_W

Hello fellow Canadian! I use CL auctions and I track the numbers very carefully. One thing to be aware of is that currency exchange rates can fluctuate. Here is the skinny on how much things cost for Canadians. First off, fill up shipping with as many books as is allowed prior to a cutoff. So I typically use the 12 book threshold before shipping. If you get to 12 books the amount you actually pay will work out to roughly the hammer price X 1.6-1.7. For example, if you get a book for $100 and it is a part of a group of 12 books that you have shipped back to Canada, the final cost will be approx $160-170 CAD by the time you pay for fee, exchange, shipping, and customs and duty charges. Higher value books mean shipping accounts for a lower percentage which brings it closer to 1.6, while lower value books (say under 1k total) will bring it more toward the 1.7 mark. If you do not fill out a shipping tier, or only ship 6 books to get into a lower shipping rate category, the numbers get significantly worse (e.g., the last time I did that it was 1.68 times the hammer price). As an added note, it used to be about hammer price X 1.5 before the shipping price hikes which never stops ticking me off. A further thing to be aware of is that customs flags high value items with the cutoff being $3,000. So when you are figuring out your bids and when to stop adding to your shipment you can save yourself some hassle by staying below 3k totals. It always works out fine, but you want to avoid getting pestered and delayed. Best of luck at the auctions!

This is a huge factor that extends the impact of the scandal beyond the number of books that were directly tampered with. From what I am seeing sales are down, but sales were already continuing to drop as we slide out of the comic boom era and back to where we were in 2019-ish. I am watching the market as well as I can, but I don't think we have an accurate handle on how much damage the incident has done to sales outside of the books that were commonly tampered with (NM98 news stand, etc). Logic tells me it has had some impact, but I don't know much of continuing drops is just that the market was always going to drop in Jan 2024.

Based on the comments on my videos I would completely agree with the bolded point. I think a big source of difference is the people who have accounts with CGC and participate on a CGC forum are typically people who buy and sell slabs. It does not have to be that, but I am speaking about the majority of people on these boards. The audience for YouTube comic book channels is very different in that it spans more broadly across the comic community, and as such it includes both people who submit books and those who do not. Some of the people who are commenting in those reply sections are not into submitting books to begin with, and for that crowd the scam was one more reason that justifies not sending anything in for grading. There is also a crowd of people who are pretty dedicated to going from channel to channel and posting their hatred of CGC in every comment section they can find. So when you look at the composition of the groups of people on these boards and those writing in comments sections on YouTube I think the differences you correctly identify make sense.

I think context is everything here. When @Lightning55 said that 90%+ of people will not be directly impacted by this scam he is completely correct, and when you point out it disproportionately impacts collectors with very expensive books you are pointing out a very similar thing. From my perspective the scam is absolutely important and I appreciate the hard work done by those who are continuing to dig into it, but it has zero impact on the way I collect, buy, and grade books. The books I send myself are clear, and the slabs I buy are typically crack and re-sub candidates (so 9.0-9.4 books I am hoping to get to 9.6/9.8). Further context is that a small number of people on the boards are dominating this thread with what basically amounts to "I hate CGC" and "why would anyone ever grade books again." The good and informative parts to this thread are people like @comicwiz and others who are bringing new potentially tampered with slabs to light to inform the community. The exhausting part of this thread are sifting through all of the responses I referred to in the first part of this paragraph because, although people have the right to spew endlessly and say the same thing again and again, not a single one of them adds anything of value to the discussion. It is worse for people like me who don't like to use the ignore feature because I am fully aware that the same person may add something of big value to another discussion along the way.

Mine was a two pack with Star Wars 11 on one side and Laugh-A-Lympics 2 on the other.

Yeah, I got that. I was just pointing out that the flaw may not have been fixable and a 9.6 could be the top end for that particular book. I do get why you are frustrated though - it is hard to know whether there is something more than can be done without having the ability to pop it out yourself.

Cool. I will continue to send in my higher end books so I can maximize the value and my return on investment, and you can continue to express your anger on message boards by arguing with people you don't know who are opting to continue submitting books. No judgment, but from an objective standpoint I think I will be better off in the long run.

Not all creases are the same. I just did a crack and resub on a book that had "creasing on back cover" in the graders notes and was initially graded by CGC as 8.0. I popped it open, worked out the creases with a ball bearing and four times through my press, and it came back as 9.8. There have been many other times when some creasing could not be fixed and the book topped out at a 9.4 or 9.6. As a general rule I assume that I cant hit a 9.8 if a book I want to pop has "creasing" in the grader notes. Typically there is a small color break or compromise to the flatness of the cover that you can't do anything about.

The incident has had absolutely zero impact on the amount I am sending in for grading. You can have whatever opinion you want but I don't believe a panic response is even remotely warranted.

Yup, that is probably the point.

Quick question for folks in Canada - Have you ever used a shipping service other than FedEx for shipping your submissions to CGC? I am getting really tired of their fees and ridiculously out of date and almost non-functional website. I am fine with books coming back through them (I just give my account number), but getting them the CGC is an expensive pain. I believe if I ship using Canada Post it flips to USPS once it crosses the border, but I am not 100% sure on that one. If that is the case I should be able to ship to the PO Box address option. Does anyone from Canada have experience doing this outside of FedEx? If so, are you happy with doing it that way?

My question is whether books currently in the system but not charged (like a pre-screen I have which is SFG) will have the new or old pricing.

There will be a change in fees effective immediately (Jan 24th), full article here: https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/12543/ My first impression is that this looks like a small price drop. At my tier I get 20% off instead of 10%. Also, unless I am mistaken, the minimum charge at high value tiers appears to have been lowered (correct me if I am wrong). Thoughts?

The data has validity for highest graded books simply because people are not likely to crack and re-sub those ones. Why would anyone crack an re-sub one of the highest graded copies of a book? The main limitations are that not all graded books are done by CGC, not all books are graded, and more books are being graded daily. So your 1 of 3 highest graded copies could potentially be 1 of 5 next year and 1 of 7 the year after. As you go down the grading funnel you do absolutely run into problems with the census overestimating the number of books out there. But IMO those counts matter less unless you are dealing with scarce books. So while I do look at the census I don't remember ever caring how many 9.4 copies of a bronze age key are out there. I typically check the number of 9.8 copies are out there and the total number of copies across all grades (understanding the former is more accurate than the latter). All sorts of imperfect data can be used if the limitations are understood.

It seems like most non-grail Silver Age books are selling for about where they were at prior to the pandemic. I used 2019 GPA values for my bids and was pretty much spot on for where they were landing. Can't speak to the bigger books since I am not big game hunting this time around.

I ended up winning a handful off books at CL last night but it would be a stretch to say I got a great deal on any of them. They were just books I wanted so I bid them up to around value.

Can't speak for anyone else but my bids are getting blown out of the water so far at the current CL auction, including a bunch of bids on tonight's books that are getting torched one by one. Still really early but rumours of prices tanking right now appear to have been greatly exaggerated.

The ability to remember what I went into the kitchen to get.

I was sorting my slabs and ran across lots of multiples, the biggest one being ASM 252. I sold two 9.6 news stand copies this week and this is what is left. All of these are crack and resubs - bumped up the grade every time but never managed to hit a 9.8.

It is people doing that work. If someone does the same boring task hundreds of times per day, 5 days a week, stuff will happen from time to time.

Wow, getting really close to the 150 mark!

I had a submission that was graded in the middle of all the hoopla and the scans went up at the usual time - i.e., grades and scans available as soon as it is marked as shipped.

25 book modern pre-screen submission Dropped off at Fedex - Jan 12 Arrived at CGC - Jan 19 SFG - Jan 19 I'm impressed that it was opened and in the system the same day it was delivered.

An older couple who are downsizing were selling off the husband's comics that he bought off the stands when they came out. I bought a few She-Hulk comics from them the first time around and while we were talking comics the topic of horror comics came up. He said he had a bunch of them, and I told him that I was interested since that brought me back to when I was young and my brothers gave me their old comics that were mostly scary or westerns. I ended up buying this group site unseen because the price he set seemed pretty reasonable - I really love books like this and I am ok with paying more for them regardless of whether keys are in there.

I am sure that is a part of it, but this is far from a complete picture. The rarity overall of news stand books is one factor that comes to mind right away when discussing news stand versus direct copies. However, not all news stands are rare. The specific thing about news stands that I chase is that they are often very hard to find in high grade because of how they were treated while on the rack and for sale. If you take a random comic that is about a FN/VF I don't think anyone should be paying any type of premium for a news stand edition. However, if you are talking books that are 9.8 or close to that it is a different story. I like and collect news stand editions, and I do think there is value added if you are very specific about what type and grade of news stand copies you collect.